Beauty and Hazards

The snow pack is thinning.  Our neighbor that hays our fields for the bulk of the hay came down after dark Saturday night with his behemoth tractor with climate control cab and plowed out our driveway.  As he was the one who constructed it for us a couple of summers ago, he knows generally where it is under the snow.  This allowed us to bring both vehicles back down to the house.  To change things up a bit, this morning we drove into the university town to a little local diner for breakfast.  The nearest parking is across Main Street and slightly uphill and though the access was cleared, the parking spaces have been trod by many feet in the past half week and between each parking space is an ice slick.  Both of us had slides, fortunately with no fall just trying to get out of the car and to the cleared walkway.

Yesterday as the roads seem to be mostly cleared, we took a jaunt 2000 more feet up our mountain to see more snow.

If you ever watched “Dirty Dancing,” this is the “lodge” in the movie, also know as Mountain Lake Lodge, a hotel with adjacent cabins.  Though it is closed this time of year, except for special weekend events, it is still beautiful.

The elevation there is about 4400 feet and the ridge has trees frosted generally from frozen fog that forms.

The property on the near edge of this valley belonged to my grandfather’s family, though when we bought our farm, I had no idea that it was literally walking distance away.  My hubby teases that I did know, but I had never even been to this county or seen that area at the time.

As we were going up to see the lake and the hotel in the snow, we saw this.  It is not our car, there was no one in it, but this is a lesson on why you don’t drive a 2 wheel drive vehicle on snowy, icy mountain roads.  The only thing keeping this car from tumbling on down the mountain side is the tree behind it that it hit as it slid over the embankment.  Hopefully, no one was hurt.  It will take a thaw and a creative, daredevil tow truck driver to get that one out.

That is the mountain on which the red car, the hotel, and our home are located.

Fortunately, this snow did not take out our power, so all of the prep we did for it does not have to be done again for the ice storm due tonight that more than likely will steal all of the conveniences from us for at least a day or two.

Life is good on our mountain farm.